There are about 12,000,000 books sold on Amazon, the oldest of which was published in the 1700s.

Google Books now has an estimated 129,000,000 books archived for searching from anywhere in the world. If you search hard enough you can find books published from the years 300-600.

It’s clear that for thousands and thousands of years many people have had a lot of things to say and write. For those thousands of years, countless people found a way to get their thoughts down on paper and into the hands of dozens or hundreds or thousands of other people. Some were so successful that their books have withheld the test of time and are now accessible by everyone.

Yet today a common question I’m asked is: how do I get my writing published? How do I turn my passion for writing into my career?

(You can enter any other creative passion in here, I’m just using writing as an example because a lot of people relate to me on that front. But anyway…)

If millions of people over the span of time were able to find a way to write and publish their work, you probably can too. Particularly when you consider that the majority of those people didn’t have access to crazy cool technology like the internet, let alone an efficient printing process for writing or publishing their ideas.

The same goes for turning your idea into a business, or popular YouTube channel, or hit app, or career, or or some other venture.

How? There are probably a hundred different ways to turn your creative passion into your livelihood (or, at the very least, something you can rely on). I don’t know, have you tried visiting a library? Or Googling for how others have done it?

We’re lucky today because the internet not only shows us the way to do these things, it also gives us the tools for doing them too.

To publish a book is as easy as writing it, that’s all there is to it. You don’t even have to go that far: just write on a blog and if you do it well enough and for long enough, someone will reach out to you about publishing a book (at least, that’s exactly what happened to me).

To start a career as an artist, inventor, designer, dancer, musician, or producer has never been easier. You just type a few words into Google and follow the steps that come up. To quote Lewis Carroll: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” The important thing is to just start. Here and now. Do whatever you can, with whatever you have, to move your ideas closer to reality.

Maybe that means searching for a book on the subject. Maybe it means reaching out to someone who has done what you want to do. Maybe it’s just looking online for answers.

The real struggle today isn’t about producing the work, or even getting your Work into the hands of other people. The problem today is coming up with ideas worth sharing, then–and most importantly–being daring enough to put them into action.

There are no excuses. If people from the 1700s could figure out how to write and publish a book or start a business without the internet, you probably can too.